A “video effect” is an enhancement to raw video footage, typically added post-production, for the purpose of adding artistic or informational interest to the footage. Examples of well known video effects include fades, dissolves, wipes, superimpositions, morphs, slow motion, fast motion and freeze-frame.
Video effects can be applied to any type of video imagery. An example of a type of video imagery to which effects are commonly applied is sports footage. For example, a slow motion effect can be added to raw footage of a sporting event to slow down the appearance of movement of an athlete on a playing field.
Effects can be added during the process of editing the video footage on an editing station. Although editing stations having specialized hardware are known, many of the video editing stations used by professional video production personnel are essentially personal computers programmed to digitally manipulate video stored on disk or similar data storage. The operator of the editing station interacts with it via a keyboard, mouse, display, and other such common user interface elements. The display (screen) allows the operator to view the raw (input) video, any intermediate results, and the resulting output video. The operator can, for example, cause the editing station to play back the video in a frame-by-frame manner on the display and apply effects at certain points, i.e., to certain frames or sequences of frames. For example, the operator can apply a freeze-frame effect, which replaces a single input video frame with multiple copies so that, when the resulting output video is played back, the frame lingers on the display for a desired time period. The operator can copy the output video to a suitable digital storage medium or transmit the output video to a remote site via a data network.